Rumors of Willow Garage's death may have been very premature, but they've come true all the same. Businessweekreports that company founder Scott Hassan shut down the robotics research pioneer in January to become the dedicated CEO of Suitable Technologies, Willow Garage's telepresence-focused spinoff. The closure means that you won't be seeing follow-ups to machines like the PR2 or TurtleBot 2. However, the firm may have created an enduring legacy through its open source robotics platform -- when Baxter and numerous other automatons are using the code, you could be hearing about Willow Garage's work for some time to come.

Update: We've gotten in touch with Willow Garage, and it turns out that rumors of the company's death have been greatly exaggerated... again. While it did move some staff to Suitable Technologies back in August and offloaded support services to Clearpath Robotics, it's still very much in the robot business. Also, the company notes that Hassan has been the CEO of Suitable for roughly three years. It's not clear where Businessweek obtained its info, but it's good to know that Willow Garage is alive and kicking.

Want to try out ROS (Robot Operating System) on an official Willow Garage product, but don't have the $400,000 required to pick up our old pal, PR2? You're precisely the audience the company is looking to hit with the TurtleBot, a (relatively) low-cost robotics kit (around $1,500) that looks a bit like small shelving united seated atop a Roomba. A couple of months back, the Bay Area-based company unveiled a sequel built on top of a new base, Yujin Robotics's Kobuki, which promises more speed, letting the plucky little 'bot run over small bumps.

Pick up the full kit and you're also getting a Kinect sensor and a low-end laptop. Willow's also got some add-ons like a small robotic arm that you can use to modify the thing. Stay tuned after the break to check out video of the 'bot's creators talking up the reptilian robot.

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Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:25:00 -050021|20382967http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/05/qbo-the-open-source-robot-interacts-with-people-makes-adorabl/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/05/qbo-the-open-source-robot-interacts-with-people-makes-adorabl/http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/05/qbo-the-open-source-robot-interacts-with-people-makes-adorabl/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsA while back we got a detailed look at the innards of Qbo, TheCorpora's open-source robot. But we haven't gotten to see the little guy in action -- until now. His handlers recently let him loose to run autonomously, guided by a pair of webcam eyes and voice recognition courtesy of Willow Garage's ROS software. The team soon noticed some unexpected behavior, though. Despite being programmed to follow humans at a specific distance, Qbo trailed uncomfortably near with taller people -- probably the first example of a robotic "close walker." Poring over the log files revealed why: proximity was calculated based on faces. The faces of taller people were farther away from the ground-hugging robot, which adjusted accordingly. Roll your way down the page to see more of our cute mechanized friend, and over to the source link for more musings on programming him.

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Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:25:00 -040021|19983678http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/polyro-humanoid-robot-can-be-built-by-you-looks-more-like-k-9-t/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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It may bear closer resemblance to an upright dog than a human (check out those ears!), but POLYRO here is the least frightening example of a do-it-yourself robot that we've seen to date. We're not sold on the humanoid's name as an acronym (oPen sOurce friendLY RObot), and the instructions and assembly photos are rather hit or miss, but this rollin' rover definitely scores some points for looks. Prepare to get down and dirty with a jigsaw, drill press, and "safety equipment," before the latest addition to your family is ready to roll across the living room floor on its iRobot base. Instructables has posted a full shopping list, including a 10.1-inch netbook, ROS (Robot OS), and a Kinect. If you're feeling brave, clear some time in the schedule and space in the garage after heading over to our source link.

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Wed, 04 May 2011 20:24:00 -040021|19930941http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/21/bilibot-combines-kinect-irobot-create-and-gripper-arm-for-affor/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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The Personal Robotics Group at MIT may have already strapped a Kinect to a iRobot Create, but BiliBot did them one better by adding an arm to the mix -- not to mention this cherry-red frame. Better yet, you can order your own BiliBot Developer Edition now for the affordable price of only $1,200. OK, maybe calling $1,200 "affordable" is a bit of a stretch, but in the world of programmable robotics that's not half bad, especially when you consider this self-contained robotics platform comes with its own Ubuntu-booting Core i3 computer with 4GB of RAM. The preinstalled ROS software can be used to steer the bot using data gathered through the battery operated Kinect and also to control the arm, which is connected to geared motors instead of more traditional servos. Those motors allow the BiliBot to lift three pounds up to a height of 17 inches -- perfect for beer delivery, provided you're sitting. Watch it navigate a relatively obstacle-free room in the video after the break.

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Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:33:00 -040021|19919210http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/19/mekas-m-1-mobile-manipulator-a-cuter-cody-the-spit-bath-robot/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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Remember Cody? The robot from Georgia Tech designed to give spit baths to the elderly and crippled? Well, Cody's got an attractive younger cousin named M-1, and for $340,000 this fine piece of machinery could be all yours. Built by San Francisco-based Meka Robotics, the M-1 Mobile Manipulator (based on Cody) runs on a combination of ROS and proprietary software and sports a Kinect-compatible head with a five megapixel Ethernet camera, arms with six-axis force-torque sensors at the wrist, force controlled grippers, and an omnidirectional mobile base. If the standard features don't fit your needs, Meka offers various upgrades, including four-fingered hands and humanoid heads, complete with expressive eyelids (à la Meka's Dreamer), ears, and additional sensor compatibility. These add-ons will of course cost you, but we think its worth it to have those big translucent eyes staring back at you. A rather touching demo after the jump.

From enhancing your WoW game to putting you in Tom Hanks's shoes, DIYers the world o'er really do seem to love Kinect. And what do we have here? Taylor Veltrop's Veltrobot remote telepresence 'bot uses the PrimeSense open source Kinect drivers for tracking the user's skeleton, with a modified Kondo KHR-1HV mirroring the operator's movements (which are received via 802.11n WiFi). Right now he is only controlling the arms, but with any luck we should be seeing complete control over all the robot's movements soon enough. Once the thing is finalized, Veltrop plans on releasing an open source development kit. And then? That's right: robot avatars for everyone!

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Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:16:00 -050021|19784471http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/15/primesenses-openni-provides-the-best-kinect-drivers-yet-from-s/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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We've been so wrapped up in Kinect hacks lately that we actually missed a Kinect non-hack that emerged last week. PrimeSense, who built the initial Project Natal reference hardware for Microsoft, has released its own open source drivers for the Kinect. PrimeSense is working with Willow Garage (best known for its open source ROS robot operating system), and Side-Kick (a motion gaming startup) through a new OpenNI organization it set up, and the trio will be combining their powers for good. The OpenNI framework will cover low-level hardware support (drivers for actual cameras and other sensors), and high-level visual tracking (turning your body into a 3D avatar that kicks ass in a virtual world). This should be a boon to an already vibrant Kinect hacking community, and if the video above is any indication, we aren't far from Kinect-level interaction and gameplay on our lowly PCs.

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Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:14:00 -050021|19763558http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/kinect-sensor-bolted-to-an-irobot-create-starts-looking-for-tro/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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While there have already been a lot of great proof-of-concepts for the Kinect, what we're really excited for are the actual applications that will come from it. On the top of our list? Robots. The Personal Robots Group at MIT has put a battery-powered Kinect sensor on top of the iRobot Create platform, and is beaming the camera and depth sensor data to a remote computer for processing into a 3D map -- which in turn can be used for navigation by the bot. They're also using the data for human recognition, which allows for controlling the bot using natural gestures. Looking to do something similar with your own robot? Well, the ROS folks have a Kinect driver in the works that will presumably allow you to feed all that great Kinect data into ROS's already impressive libraries for machine vision. Tie in the Kinect's multi-array microphones, accelerometer, and tilt motor and you've got a highly aware, semi-anthropomorphic "three-eyed" robot just waiting to happen. We hope it will be friends with us. Video of the ROS experimentation is after the break.

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Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:38:00 -050021|19723226http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/08/willow-garage-now-selling-the-pr2-for-400k-a-pop/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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While it was fun while it lasted, it was obvious that Willow Garage couldn't keep giving away its ultra-high-end development platform PR2 bots forever. After shipping 11 of the bots to research institutes, Willow Garage is now selling the PR2 to all comers -- as long as they've got 400 grand in their back pocket. We've covered the specs before (oodles of CPU power, two highly articulated pincer arms, and high-end vision systems), along with some of PR2's recent hijinks, and hopefully we see more of that sort of stuff now that the rugged, ready-for-adventure PR2 is on the market. If you can't scrap together all the cash, Willow Garage will also be offering a discount $280k version to people and institutions that can demonstrate "past performance and leadership" in open source robotics software -- a topic obviously near and dear to Willow Garage's heart with ROS, the OS that powers PR2 and is slowly spreading throughout much of the world of higher-end personal robotics.

As for the high price and its generally opaque business model, Willow Garage compares the current state of its industry to high end workstations in the 70s, back when researchers were spending more money and time figuring out what their computers could do than actually accomplishing anything with them. Willow Garage isn't planning on making any sort of killing in the business yet -- they'd just be happy to have the PR2 project at a self sustaining level -- but they're working toward what they see as the "next radical shift" in productivity, a personal robotics follow-up to the personal computer revolution. This is a future similar to the one Bill Gates was talking up back in 2006, but of course Willow Garage wants its open source ROS platform to be the "Microsoft" this time around. They certainly don't plan to corner the hardware market in the process, however: the company hopes the quasi-followup to the PR2 will actually be built by multiple companies. Gallery-101640

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Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -040021|19624324http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/23/open-source-qbo-bot-makes-the-jump-to-ros-the-open-source-robot/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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While the Willow Garage-initiated ROS is designed to consolidate and accelerate robotics innovation for the long term, it's still a long ways from powering your robotic butler / life coach / best friend, so it's exciting to see it put to use in the here and now. The folks at Thecorpora, responsible for the Qbo open source robot project, have been busy converting Qbo's original Java API into ROS, and just announced they're at 99.9 percent completion of that task. That means the Qbo gets instant access to some of the fun development going on in ROS, like stacking all its cameras and ultrasonic sensors into a system for machine vision, or controlling the bot with a Wiimote or a PS3 controller. (There's a video after the break of the Wiimote in action). Don't think Qbo will be powerful enough for you? Willow Garage just announced that it's about to put its own ROS-powered PR2 bot on sale soon, after a few months of its (highly successful) PR2 Beta Program.

We're pretty big fans of Willow Garage, and its generous support of the open source Robot Operating System (ROS). For its latest trick, the company has developed a system to teach its PR3 robot billiards. Unlike projects we've seen in the past, Poolshark doesn't rely on overhead cameras to calculate moves. Rather, it's forced to conform to standard rules: it can only shoot from where the cue ball lay, and it sights shots from the same vantage point as human player would. And, you know what? While not perfect, the robot does pretty well. Not bad for a week's work, eh? Video after the break.

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Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:19:00 -040021|19519309http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/willow-garage-starts-shipping-its-pr2-beta-program-bots-get-rea/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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It isn't hard to get behind a company like Willow Garage, who not only has enough funding to invest heavily in building on ROS, an open source Robotics Operating System that's gaining traction in the robotics community, but also managed to dig up enough spare change to give away $4.4 million in robots to a few lucky research institutions. There were 11 schools selected to receive the Willow Garage-developed PR2 Beta, which stuffs some very high end sensors, two articulated arms, and sixteen CPU cores on top of a rolling base -- providing a lot of leg room for advanced functionality. Of course, in the world of robots, "advanced" means stuff like opening doors and not running over your cat, but with a common code base to work from and all this fancy hardware, hopefully these schools will manage to push the industry along a bit during the next two years that the PR2 Beta Program lasts.

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Fri, 28 May 2010 20:10:00 -040021|19496150http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/13/ros-a-common-os-to-streamline-robotic-engineering/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
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The biannual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence has this year shed light on a new effort to standardize robot instructions around a common platform, so that designers won't have to "reinvent the wheel over and over" with every project. Presently, robot design is undertaken in an ad hoc fashion, with both hardware and software being built from scratch, but teams at Stanford, MIT and the Technical University of Munich are hoping to change that with the Robot Operating System, or ROS. This new OS would have to compete with Microsoft's robotics offering, but the general enthusiasm for it at the conference suggests a bright future, with some brave souls even envisioning a robot app store somewhere down the line. Video after the break.